To start, the post makes the obvious—yet all too frequently
neglected—point that when it comes to housing there are two
"bottoms." The one that relates to economic activity and jobs is
housing construction/new home sales. The other bottom refers to
pricing.

In terms of new construction/total home sales, by all accounts we
seem to have turned the corner.

As for prices—which is arguably the more difficult case to
make—Calculated
Risk writes:

The problem with using the house price indexes to look for a
bottom is that they are reported with a significant lag. As an
example, the recently released Case-Shiller index was for November and the
index is an average of September, October and November - so it is
a report for several months ago. The CoreLogic index is a little
more current - the recent release was for December, and CoreLogic
uses a weighted average for prices (December weighted the most) -
but that is still quite a lag.

Both of those indexes will bottom seasonally around March, and
then start increasing again.

There are several reasons I think that house prices are close to
a bottom. First prices are close to normal looking at the
price-to-rent ratio and real prices (especially if prices
fall another 4% to 5% NSA between the November Case-Shiller
report and the March report). Second the
large decline in listed inventory means less downward
pressure on house prices, and third, I think that several
policy initiatives will lessen the pressure from distressed
sales (the probable mortgage settlement, the HARP refinance
program, and more).

Now you may have disagreements here, but you should absolutely
pay attention when Calculated Risk makes a call like this.

The Calculated
Risk archives go back to January 2005, so we're talking at
least 7 years of day in/day out coverage of the economy, and the
site has always had a special focus on housing.

From 2006-2008, the blog was famously co-authored by "Tanta"
(she passed away in December of 2008), who really put the blog on
the map with her incredible knowledge of the housing and mortgage
markets—knowledge that allowed her to anticipate the bust from
miles away.

Throughout this, the main author—the totally un-egotistical Bill
McBride (his name is not featured prominently—has plugged away,
meticulously chronicling just about every economic indicator
there is, from housing starts, the the Architectural Billing
Index, the restaurant index, the regional Fed surveys, the ISM,
and so on. And by diligently following these measures, he's
gotten to know them REALLY WELL.

Now, speaking from personal experience here, we can say that one
of the best advantages you can get in the business of writing
about economic conditions is familiarity with the data. So if
you've covered lots and lots of jobs reports, you're going to
have a much easier time knowing what data is key to suss out, and
when you're seeing a turn.

Since Calculated Risk puts everyone to shame on this front, the
blog regularly identifies key twists and turns.

For example, after years of super-bearishness on housing-related
activity,
it was early last year that McBride started talking about
residential construction actually being a net positive
contributor to GDP—the first time since 2005.

The bottom line is: Calculated Risk is exactly what you want in
economics reporting. Totally non-ideological, non-book talking,
data-driven, incredibly experienced, and just knowledgeable as
all get-out.

When a site that got started by famously chronicling the housing
bust says that housing is at a bottom, you listen.